Date: 25 October 2018

What would it feel like to be a cyborg? Is being a YouTuber a real job? Should you watch more TV and forget reading? What exactly was the ‘Brisbane Sound?’ What are the latest trends in design?

These questions and more are the focus of Createx 2018, QUT’s immersive festival of performances, exhibitions, screenings and panel discussions, at the Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove, 13-17 November. CreateX will challenge, inspire and drive what it means to design, create and communicate in the 21st century.

CreateX 2018 Highlights:

Inferno – part robotic dance party, part wake-up call from the future from machine art visionaries Louis-Philippe Demers and Bill Vorn. Participants are fitted with robotic exoskeleton suits and are plunged into the experience. Inspired by ideas of control and Dante’s depiction of the Circles of Hell, Inferno confronts what it means to surrender to human-robot symbiotic relationships.

Morning of the Earth – Screening of Alby Falzon and David Elfick’s 1971 cult classic surf film with a reimagined soundtrack from current bands. The project is led by Tim Gaze, a QUT doctoral student who played on the original soundtrack, along with acts including Tamam Shud, John J. Francis, Brian Cadd and Mike Rudd. Surfers featured in the movie include Gerry Lopez, Rusty Miller, Michael Peterson, Stephen Cooney, Mark Warren and Nat Young.

Is being a YouTuber a real job?Panel discussion chaired by QUT Film, Television and Digital Media lecturer Ruari Elkington with panellists including Australian YouTube stars Elly Awesome and Madison Lloyd of SketchSHE. YouTube micro-celebrities and personalities are social media stars and their journeys to stardom are very different to the career pathways into the traditional film and television industries. Anyone can pick up a camera and upload content to YouTube but how possible is it really to make a living doing so and what rights and responsibilities do YouTube creators have?

The Brisbane Sound – Scott Regan, from Brisbane group The Gin Club, is doing a PhD on ‘The Brisbane Sound’, also known as the ‘Striped Sunlight Sound’ - the ‘five golden years’ from 1978 to 1983. He has written five pieces of music in the style of the sound produced by bands like The Go-Betweens, The Frontier Scouts, The Apartments, The Riptides and others. Scott will perform these prior to a discussion led by former Go-Between John Willsteed about the Brisbane scene of the time.

Forget Reading, You Should Watch More TV! In the midst of a television renaissance, has reading become passé? Are we better off curling up with an iPad rather than a paperback? Join writers Trent Dalton, Kris Olsson, Susan Johnson, Stephen M Irwin, Melanie Saward and Christopher Przewloka as they take the stage to debate the merits of reading versus the merits of TV.

Warmwaters live studio recording – David Megarrity and Bridget Boyle’s Spinal Tap-like folk music creation Warmwaters was a big hit at the Queensland Cabaret Festival a couple of years ago. Now they are recording a concept EP - In Experience. Their open studio at QUT’s CreateX Festival gives adoring fans the opportunity to be the first to sample the new, psychedelic currents of Warmwaters.

Ivanov - Eamon Flack has adapted this Anton Chekov classic and set it in contemporary Australia. Director Daniel Evans and QUT’s trainee actors serve up a loud, brash version of Chekhov’s first major work that beats with the hallmarks of his classics: love, dreams, restlessness and passion.